by Ben Wolf
Axel had to admit the lights were pretty impressive. But they also reinforced his frustration at having to wait for Lumen to give him what he rightfully deserved—no, what he’d earned.
Lumen had intended to make them into Imperators—or at least that’s what he’d said before they’d departed to raise his army from Western Kanarah. Now Axel wondered if Lumen could even do such a thing.
He’d seen Lumen do other amazing things, from slaying a Jyrak with one swing of his incredible sword to obliterating all of Matthios’s soldiers in a single powerful blast, but those events stood in stark contrast with the meager power he’d granted to Calum. It was weak and mostly useless—much like Calum himself, Axel supposed, but that wasn’t the point.
The point was that if Lumen could have done more, why hadn’t he?
Maybe he can’t, Axel decided. Or maybe he just won’t.
As Axel continued brooding, Calum plopped into the seat next to him. The skin on the back of Axel’s neck bristled, and he thought to straighten his posture, but he didn’t. He remained slumped in his own chair, arms folded, still scowling.
Axel had nothing to fear from Calum. After all, Calum had cheated during their fight, and Axel could still knock him out cold any time he wanted. But if he reacted to Calum’s approach, it would show weakness. Axel wasn’t weak, so he didn’t allow himself to react.
Plus, he intended to ignore Calum anyway.
“I still can’t believe we made it,” Calum said. “And the size of Lumen’s army is beyond—”
“I have nothing to say to you,” Axel interrupted. So much for just ignoring him. “So move along.”
“C’mon, Axel.” Calum gave a small laugh. “It was just a scrap. You lost one—finally.”
“I said I’m not talking to you.” Axel had made eye contact with Calum once already, but he refused to do it again. He continued to stare forward, eyebrows arched down.
Calum sighed. “Look, I know I owe you an apology.”
Axel met Calum’s eyes, even though he’d just sworn not to. “I’m not gonna say it again, Calum. Get out of my face, or I’ll make you leave.”
An instant of hesitation crossed Calum’s face, but it didn’t last nearly long enough. His expression hardened to match Axel’s, and he quipped, “Just like you did in our fight, right?”
Axel had to hand it to Calum—he’d always had a spine. Sure, he’d been little more than a weak child when they’d first set out on this wild adventure, but he’d risen to meet every challenge along the way.
Apparently, that also included Axel.
Even so, the comment brought Axel thisclose to lurching out of his chair, grabbing Calum by his shoulder, and smashing a bitter elbow into his teeth.
But Axel had decided to keep his rage in check. He was only there for one reason anymore—to claim the power Lumen had promised him.
Not to fight Calum again.
Not to argue with Magnus or Riley.
Not to endure Condor’s witticisms.
Not even to pursue Lilly.
Axel just wanted that power. And once he got it, he was gone.
Instead of bashing his elbow into Calum’s face, Axel just shrugged, stood, and said, “Fine, then. If you’re gonna be a pest, I’ll go somewhere else.”
As Axel turned to walk away, Calum tried to say something, but thanks to the noise of the soldiers carousing in the tent around them, Axel blocked it out of his mind and kept walking.
“I’m sorry, Axel,” Calum called, but even as he said it, he realized it wouldn’t be loud enough to reach his friend’s ears. Had Calum wanted to shout it, he could’ve, but he hadn’t. Having to shout an apology ruined the idea of apologizing, at least in his mind.
That, and he hadn’t actually meant it like he should’ve.
Calum sighed, but he reminded himself that he knew Axel better than anyone. He’d eventually come back around when his pride had recovered.
Calum allowed his gaze to wander throughout the tent. It landed, of course, on Lilly. She was by far the most pleasant of anyone in either army to look at.
She was wedged between General Balena and Condor, the latter of whom sat facing away from her, talking to Riley, of all people. Evidently, somewhere in all the traveling, they’d reconciled and left their violent past behind.
On the other side, General Balena’s imposing form shielded Lilly like an enormous black owl protecting one of its young, but he, too, was entrenched in a conversation, this time with General Tolomus.
That left Lilly sitting there alone, wearing a disinterested expression and poking at the remnants of her dinner on the plate in front of her. Even bored out of her mind, she still captivated every iota of Calum’s attention.
Then she looked up and found his eyes.
Neither of them broke their stare.
Calum tried to convey everything he felt for her through his gaze and his face, but he worried the combination might be making him look like he was grimacing, or in pain, or that he had a stone in his boot. He supposed, in a way, all of those applied to some extent when it came to Lilly.
Toward the end of their visual lock, Lilly’s eyes seemed to soften, but then she blinked and looked away.
Calum wanted to go over to her, but he didn’t. Not with Condor right there. Not with General Balena “guarding” her without actually guarding her.
Instead, he turned and started to say something to Magnus, but he remembered Magnus wasn’t in the tent. He couldn’t have fit in there even if he’d wanted to, so he’d taken several of his Sobeks on a hunting excursion back in the mountains rather than sticking around camp all evening.
With so many hungry Saurians and Wolves, all of whom preferred meat instead of fruits, vegetables, and grains, someone had to provide for their growling bellies as well.
Many of the Wolves had also gone out on their own, but according to Riley, they’d be back by sunrise for sure. They valued independence when possible, and smaller packs had often diverged from the main group to hunt or steal food and resources as they’d traveled from Western Kanarah to the eastern half of the land.
Calum sighed again. He missed having Magnus around to talk to. But now, as the Dragon King, he had less and less time for such things. And with Lilly and Riley both holding similar positions over their own races, and with Axel still mad at him, Calum was alone again.
Just like he’d been back at the quarry.
Calum shook away the feelings that accompanied that dreary thought and stood to his feet. He would find someone to talk to, or, failing that, he’d get some extra rest that night.
He waded into the center of the tent, tried to make eye contact with Lilly once more, and when that failed, he turned his attention to a group of men standing around the center tent post with mugs of ale in their hands.
He greeted them, and they welcomed him over. Someone passed him a fresh mug of ale, and though he’d had his fair share already, Calum didn’t refuse.
One of them toasted to Lumen’s return and extended his mug forward, as did the other men. Calum mimicked the motion and clanked his mug against several of the others, sloshing ale onto the hard-packed dirt floor, and then he took a drink along with the rest of the men.
Perhaps he wasn’t alone after all. Everyone here was on his side. Everyone here wanted the same thing.
And together, they would achieve it.
…at least they would after they finished their drinks.
Once outside the tent, Axel didn’t bother to look back. Instead, he sought out his bedroll and his pack among the countless others that now lay outside the tent’s outer perimeter like decayed berries fallen from their bush. He found it, snatched it up, and started heading toward the edge of the camp.
Along with Magnus’s old armor, which Axel still wore, and the Blood Ore sword sheathed along his back, Axel now carried everything he owned. He’d done it many times before, but this time, he was going off alone, with no one to look out for him—and no one for him to babysit.
These people had frustrated him while they’d traveled together, and they’d outright disappointed him at the end. But nothing was more of a letdown than Lumen and his empty promises.
Axel shook off the sense of loss—not for the people he was leaving behind but for the power that could’ve been his if only Lumen had been true to his word. If Axel could’ve gotten even a taste of that power, it might’ve been enough…
But it didn’t matter. Well, it did matter, but Axel was determined not to let it ruin the rest of his life, or even the rest of that night. He still had a great set of armor, a killer sword, and a lot of fighting and tactics training. He’d easily find work as a mercenary, or he could make a life for himself by protecting a town or a village from bandits.
Really, anything would be better than this.
Axel passed through the camp’s perimeter fence and left the tamped-down dirt of the campsite behind. As he stepped into the golden waves of grain stretching for miles beyond, he heard the telltale shing of steel being drawn from a scabbard.
His eyes widened, and he reached for his own sword, but it was too late. A silver blade flashed at his midsection.
Axel’s left arm moved to intercept the blow, and the weapon pinged off his Blood Ore armor harmlessly, aside from the dull sting of the sword’s solid impact on his arm. The next strike came for Axel’s head, also faster than he’d expected, but he ducked, and the sword thumped into his pack, still slung from his shoulder, instead.
He let it go and finally managed to get his own weapon drawn. Only then did his attacker emerge from within the grain, clad in amber attire that seemed to shift colors to match its wearer’s surroundings. The man also wore a scarf around his head that covered every part of him aside from his eyes, and it, too, also changed colors.
Axel considered crying out for help, but if he couldn’t take down one wimpy soldier on his own, then he didn’t deserve to live, plain and simple.
Three quick strikes from his opponent clashed against his Blood Ore blade, and then one devastating counterstrike from Axel cleaved deep into the attacker’s side. The man gasped and went down in the dirt, and his clothes shifted colors to match, rendering him nearly invisible on the ground.
Axel did him the mercy of finishing him off quickly, then he scanned his surroundings for signs of anyone else. Seeing no one, he reached down to grab the man by his ankle to pull him back toward the camp. As he did, something zipped over his shoulder, right where his head had just been.
He glanced back. Some thirty paces behind him, an had arrow lodged in one of the logs forming the camp’s perimeter fence, and he cursed. As soon as Axel looked up, another arrow pinged off his breastplate.
That’s when he saw helmets moving through the stalks of grain, drawing ever closer to the camp. If it weren’t for the moonlight above that glinted off their metal heads, he never would’ve seen them.
A third arrow plinked off his shoulder, and he knew it was only a matter of time until one of the archers hit him in his head, so he turned back toward the camp and ran. As he did, he looked out across the sea of grain on both sides.
He saw thousands of glints of moonlight rapidly approaching his camp.
His camp. Was it really his anymore?
Well, with thousands of troops surrounding them, he couldn’t get out, so yeah, it was still his camp… at least for now.
Once he made it back inside the fence, he pushed the makeshift gate shut and hefted the heavy wooden beam into its brackets, even though he knew it wouldn’t hold for long. Then he headed straight for the main tent, shouting a warning to anyone and everyone who could hear him, as more and more arrows plodded into the dirt all around him, fired blindly by the archers outside the camp.
Almost immediately, the fence gate tore open behind Axel, snapping the wooden beam like a twig. The King’s army had come like a thief in the night, and Axel knew they were only there for one reason: to destroy Lumen and his rebellion.
But as Axel yelled, a blinding light appeared before him, in front of the tent.
Lumen held his gleaming sword in his hand, and as if by some silent order, every tent collapsed at once, revealing thousands of armed men, inexplicably ready to engage the King’s forces.
With a primal roar, they rushed to meet their enemies in battle.
Chapter Twenty-Three
At the sound of someone shouting that the King’s soldiers had come, Captain Anigo’s ears perked up. Now, as the lone prisoner who’d remained loyal to the King, he grinned.
His faith and obedience had paid off. He hadn’t strayed from his true path, and now escape was potentially only moments away.
The problem was, he was chained around the center post of the second largest tent in the camp. The post was well-rooted in the ground, and he stood no chance of being able to tip it over or break it in order to get free.
But just when he’d resigned himself to wait for rescue, the tent fabric collapsed around him, allowing the men guarding him to rush out into the battle in some sort of half-baked surprise counterattack. Perhaps Lumen had known or anticipated the arrival of the King’s men tonight, or perhaps he’d made sure his men stayed vigilant at all times.
Either way, the tent went down, the men guarding Captain Anigo left him behind, and he realized there was, in fact, one way he could escape on his own: up.
The tent post loomed overhead, about fifteen feet high. Now, without the heavy tent fabric at the top of the post, all Captain Anigo had to do was climb up the post, unsling his chains, and then climb back down to his freedom.
Though he was weak and exhausted and had only eaten a few scraps reserved for him by his guards, he marshaled what strength he had left, bolstered by the prospect of escape, and began to climb.
Calum had picked the worst possible time to carouse with his new friends, but even so, the arrival of the King’s army hadn’t caught him fully unprepared. At least he was still wearing his armor and still had the Dragon’s Breath sword strapped to his back.
The idea of fighting while slightly inebriated—or perhaps more than slightly—concerned him, but the first clashes of battle around him sobered him quickly. Flanked by his new friends, he rushed out to meet the enemy head-on with his fiery sword in hand.
War raged under the moonlight, yet the Dragon’s Breath sword and the light from Lumen cast much more light across the campsite. Even so, deep shadows reached across the campsite, grasping at the soldiers like long claws scraping for purchase against the light.
Calum ran through the camp, occasionally clashing with whichever of the King’s soldiers managed to break through the front lines. Were it not for the extreme power of the Dragon’s Breath sword, Calum would’ve succumbed to their numbers many times over. Instead, he easily cut through the approaching soldiers, their armor, and their weapons.
That is, until Calum swung his sword at a man literally twice his size.
Rather than cleaving through the man’s axe as if it were paper, the weapon actually stopped the Dragon’s Breath sword entirely. The axe flared with bright amethyst light upon impact, and it glimmered with crystalline refractions both up and down its shaft and within the axe head itself.
The sight briefly reminded Calum of the Calios, but this was different. It was more like the entire weapon was meticulously carved out of a single massive gemstone rather than forged of metal.
In the light given off by the Dragon’s Breath, Calum saw the glint of several other gemstone-like elements that made up the man’s armor.
His broad breastplate appeared to be cut from a single ruby, his helmet from blue sapphire and its faceplate from a yellow one, and his arm and leg armor looked to be made from emeralds. In his other hand, rather than wielding a shield, he held another axe, this one glistening with the white of crystal or perhaps diamond.
How any of this was possible, Calum couldn’t fathom. He’d only ever seen armor made from fabric, leather, or metal—never from gigantic gemstones.
And th
ough Calum had seen large and powerful fighters before, this guy was a literal giant. Even Magnus in his Sobek form wasn’t as tall or as broad as this warrior. Perhaps it was just his armor, but every part of the man’s body seemed unreasonably oversized, including his hands, his feet, his head, and his torso. It didn’t seem possible.
Calum considered that he still might be slightly drunk from all the ale he’d downed prior to the battle, but when that diamond axe swung at his sword, he realized he wasn’t imagining things. Though he raised the Dragon’s Breath sword to defend, the blow lifted Calum off his feet and sent him tumbling across the campsite in a wild blur.
When he righted himself, the massive man outfitted with gemstone armor was nowhere to be found, but the battle raged on nonetheless. Calum had managed to keep his grip on the Dragon’s Breath sword, and for now, that was good enough.
Someone else could handle the gemstone guy. Calum headed back into the battle with the rest of the King’s men.
General Balena and General Tolomus had abandoned Lilly at her table the instant the alarm was raised, and Riley vanished into the nearest shadow, but Condor stayed at her side, as usual. She found comfort in knowing he’d stuck around when her generals had blasted away without warning, but it also bothered her that she wasn’t with them, leading her people.
“Just as I was beginning to get used to the rest and relaxation…” Condor sighed and tugged on her arm. “Come, Premieress. We’d best get you to safety.”
Lilly pulled back immediately. “My place is with my people, fighting alongside them.”
“A noble and just idea, to be sure,” Condor began, “but one that might ultimately get you killed.”
“I’ve survived this long with that ‘idea,’” Lilly countered.
“That was before you had an army of Wisps to fight on your behalf and two capable generals to command them.”
“And I also have the Calios, which offers even greater protection than you or any number of soldiers can afford me,” Lilly asserted.